Architects

Morning routine: Because of the travel, I always have a week when I am really waking up early. I get up and start to work very quietly. I make the coffee. Then have breakfast. I get to the office before 9 a.m.

Evening routine: My wife and I will watch political shows. We are political junkies. We will eat while watching Keith Olbermann on MSNBC and end with Stephen Colbert's program on Comedy Central. Then to bed.

Procrastination technique: I work best either under pressure or by emptying my brain over the weekend. That blank state is helpful. It is like an athlete before a competition.

Le Corbusier’s working hours were implacably regular. During
my four years at the atelier, he worked at the rue de Sévres from two in the
afternoon to around seven. The hour of 2:00 P.M., I soon learned, was holy. If
you were a minute late you risked a reprimand. At first Corbu arrived either by
subway (a convenient, direct metro line connected his Michel-Ange- Molitor
station with the atelier’s Sévres-Babylone) or by taxi. Later on he started
driving his old pistachio-green Simca Fiat convertible. In his last years it
would be the taxi again. The process of returning home revealed quite a lot
about Le Corbusier’s character. If the work went well, if he enjoyed his own
sketching and was sure of what he intended to do, then he forgot about the hour
and might be home late for dinner. But if things did not go too well, if he
felt uncertain of his ideas and unhappy with his drawings, then Corbu became
jittery. He would fumble with his wristwatch – a small, oddly feminine
contraption, far too small for his big paw – and finally say, grudgingly,
“C’est difficile, l’architecture,” toss the pencil or charcoal stub on the
drawing, and slink out, as if ashamed to abandon the project and me -- and us --
in a predicament.

During these early August days, I learned quite a bit about
Le Corbusier’s daily routine. His schedule was rigidly organized. I remember
how touched I was by his Boy Scout earnestness: at 6 A.M., gymnastics and . . . painting, a kind of fine-arts calisthenics; at 8 A.M., breakfast. Then Le
Corbusier entered into probably the most creative part of his day. He worked on
the architectural and urbanistic sketches to be transmitted to us in the
afternoon. Outlines of his written work would also be formulated then, along
with some larger parts of the writings. Spiritually nourished by the preceding
hours of physical and visual gymnastics, the hours of painting, he would use
the main morning time for his most inspired conceptualization. A marvelous
phenomenon indeed, this creative routine, implemented with his native Swiss
regularity, harnessing and channeling what is most elusive. Corbu himself
acknowledged the importance of this regimen. “If the generations come”, he
wrote, “attach any importance to my work as an architect, it is to these
unknown labors that one as to attribute its deeper meaning.” It is wrong to
assume, I believe, as [others] have suggested, that Le Corbusier was devoting this time
to the conceptualization of shapes to be applied directly in his architecture;
rather, it was for him a period of concentration during which his imagination,
catalyzed by the activity of painting, could probe most deeply into his
subconscious.

A decade after Ponti's death his daughter, Lisa Licitra Ponti,
summarised his career as: "Sixty years of work, buildings in thirteen
countries, lectures in twenty-four, twenty-five years of teaching,
fifty years of editing, articles in every one of the five hundred and
sixty issues of his magazines, two thousand five hundred letters
dictated, two thousand letters drawn, designs for a hundred and twenty
enterprises, one thousand architectural sketches."

It was, as she concluded, "a great deal, and all from one man." Lisa
also described the daily routine which enabled her father to achieve so
much. It began between 5am and 6am when he wrote thirty letters mostly
to friends and collaborators telling them that he had decided to change
this or that detail of a project. Ponti then left his family home for
his nearby studio, a converted garage so big that, in the early days,
his draftsmen rode their scooters right up to their desks, where he
worked from 7am to 8pm. He sketched and wrote so frenziedly that his
daughter recalled his hands being stained "black with graphite and ink"
by the middle of the afternoon. Ponti then carried on working after
returning home for dinner: often drawing silently after the lights had
gone out, his sketches illuminated by the lights in other houses. Lisa
calculated that he typically squeezed sixty hours into an ordinary day.

Morning routine SCOTT BROWN: I get up at 5 a.m. and call my mother's caregivers. Then we have breakfast. VENTURI:
I get up almost that early, to look at the TV and get dressed. And I
take a lot of notes in the middle of the night, so I get those
organized.

Evening routine VENTURI: We get home at around 6:30 p.m., put on British sitcoms, BBC News and then I do a crossword puzzle.

Morning routine: I get up around 5:30 or 6. I read. My best time to
think and read is between 5:30 and 7. I take a shower at 7 and make my
son's breakfast at 7:15. Then I walk my younger son to school and get
to work by 8.

Morning routine: I get up anywhere from 6 to 7 a.m. I kiss my daughter
and exercise at the house for an hour. Then I have a cup of coffee and
listen to classical music. I just sit and listen to music. It sets the
day.

How he ends his day: Dinner with the family. We do that late, around 10
o'clock. We always set up the candles, eat, relax and talk about things
other than work. My wife, Nina, cooks.